Phones 20 years ago didn’t have expansive glass-covered screens. The biggest I had (blackberry curve) was fairly plasticky and quite sturdy, when dropped it might sometimes eject the battery compartment cover but otherwise survived in perfect working order. And of course Nokias were almost indestructible.

Good point. I did have a Kyocera 6035 which I dropped and broke the screen on (years past its useful life) but that was an exotic device.

Yeah people forget how nearly indestructible the old Nokia candy bar phones were.

I mean, they were pretty trivial electronic components with a tiny screen wrapped in a kg of plastic. Like, what even could go wrong with them?

But modern smartphones are anything like that, and people do like the more premium materials on the outside (and it sort of makes sense - if you have a device that you are using 24/7, it might as well "feel" more premium), so I don't think it's a fair comparison